But when this wheat is threshed out, the farmer cannot shovel it up
and grind, or sell, or put it into bins; no indeed! He cannot take
up a quart of it without permission from the government; for the
government claims one-eighth of it as a tax,--it was always a "tithe"
or tenth from the oldest historic times down to the present Sultan,
but he raised the percentage to an eighth,--and it must stay on that
exposed threshing floor, in rain or winds, or any sort of weather,
till the tax-gatherer comes and measures it, which may be a week,
or two weeks, or a month, and will be forever unless he is bribed
to come. Nor is even this double tax all; the tax-gatherer is a tax
farmer,--that is, he pays a lump sum to the government for the taxes of
a district, and all he can get above that is so much profit to him; so
if the grain on a threshing floor actually measures ten bushels, say,
he will write it fifteen. After the farmer has paid first the tax on
the land to the government direct, then the double, or rather treble,
tax to the gatherer on the crops, more than half the income he can get
from the land has gone to the government. I do not know an Armenian
farmer who is not in debt; they work hard, but the products of their
labor go to the government and the Kurds, and any one who complains
is considered a revolutionist, and imprisoned or killed. The simple
unvarnished truth is that an Armenian Christian has no rights of life
or property whatever; and all he keeps of either (not very much) is
what the regularly appointed officials or the self-appointed Kurdish
fleecers choose to leave him.
This, however, is anticipating. I have only begun on the catalogue
of taxes which strip most Armenians, and are intended to strip them,
of everything but the means of sustaining life and perpetuating their
race. When a boy is born, a poll-tax is laid on him,--two dollars
on the average,--which must be paid every year as long as he lives,
whether he remains in Armenia or leaves it. Of course, during boyhood
the parents have to pay this tax on every male child; if a woman
is widowed, she has to go on paying these capitation taxes just
the same. They are assumed to be taxes in lieu of military service;
the Sultan takes no soldiers from the Armenians,--does not dare,--and
this poll-tax is used to raise and pay that very Turkish army which in
return butchers the Armenians, just as the old tribute of Christian
children was used to butcher their parents. (That the Armenians are
unwarlike and would not make good soldiers is ridiculously untrue;
many of the best soldiers and best officers, even commanders-in-chief,
in the Russian service are Armenians.) When the boy has attained
manhood he pays his own tax,--he must have a paper of citizenship,
which must be renewed every year, and for which he must pay; but
he is not allowed to leave the country without providing absolute
security, either in property or bondsmen, for paying that tax through
life, wherever he may be. Of course this is utterly impossible in
most cases,--men of property do not often migrate, and men without
property do not easily get people to be responsible for lifelong
obligation to let them emigrate; which is one chief reason why so few
Armenians, except banished ones, or runaways, are seen in foreign
countries. Furthermore, as I have said, he must pay for a passport
every time he stirs from home. Land, houses, cattle, crops, are all
separately taxed. Suppose an Armenian owns a vineyard. First, the
land is taxed; there is a separate tax for irrigation, a third for
the grapes, a fourth if you make wine from them. In all, a vineyard
pays five taxes, and the government gets more than the owner.
Why don't they emigrate? ask my American friends. I have given one
explanation. Pharaoh would not permit the Hebrews to go away, nor
will the Sultan permit the Armenians. Another reason is that even if
one has property, it is very hard to sell it. Turks have no money
and Armenians no confidence. And to run away to a foreign country,
whose language you do not know, wholly without money, is so desperate
a remedy that most of them shrink from it.